I don't know that we need that. I've never owned land but I've never been homeless.
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Do the homeless matter?
- Thread starter We Never Know
- Start date
I don't know that we need that. I've never owned land but I've never been homeless.
If, for example, one cause for some homeless is mental illness such that they unable to adequately care for themselves, should we institutionalize such people so that responsibility and care is are taken up and met by society?
We Never Know
No Slack
Depends on how you look at it.
If they need help or they will die, do you help them or let them die?
Then there are some that don't think they need help or don't want help, but if they are mentally ill, are they making sound decision's?
That may be so, although the actual buying of land may be a separate issue. The government could buy the land and build housing, but either way, the bottom line is that housing is a basic human right which this country has been grossly derelict in protecting and defending.
Audie
Veteran Member
20 percent surge in HK homeless due to covid etc!
Nearly 1500 people!
Sand Dancer
Crazy Cat Lady
That's terrible! I have heard this before and it's shocking that we do this.
Sand Dancer
Crazy Cat Lady
Supposedly many are addicted to alcohol and drugs. Others are single moms and kids. There was an empty little motel near my old house. I wanted to get someone to turn it into a place for homeless people. Sadly, it got turned into a church. Lots of homeless live in the woods near there. It would have been nice for them. The church built a locked gate in front. Guess those sinners weren't welcome.
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Sand Dancer
Crazy Cat Lady
We used to but in the 70s they were institutionalized unless they were deemed incompetent.
PureX
Veteran Member
In the U S, by the time one has become homeless, it’s not very likely that they will ever return to society. This is the thing no one wants to face.
We like to imagine that we can develop programs that will solve the problem of people being “bottomed out” of our society, but the fact is that a huge majority of those people are beyond the help of any programs. They are not going to return to being happy cogs in the machine that drove them to insanity, addiction, and hopelessness in the first place.
So we need to stop pretending that we can somehow “repair” them, and put them back to work making rich people richer, like the rest of us do. Because most of them are permanently broken. They were barely “workable” to begin with, which is why they were driven out of our culture and into poverty in the first place. A few might be recoverable, but most are not. And that’s a fact we need to face.
So the question really is are we still willing to help them survive even though they are never going to be ‘productive citizens’? Or are we going to continue letting them suffer and die in the streets. And in shacks in backwater towns all across the country? Because only about 1 in 50 of them are ever going to become functional members of society, again. And their numbers are growing far faster then that percentage will ever mitigate.
We like to imagine that we can develop programs that will solve the problem of people being “bottomed out” of our society, but the fact is that a huge majority of those people are beyond the help of any programs. They are not going to return to being happy cogs in the machine that drove them to insanity, addiction, and hopelessness in the first place.
So we need to stop pretending that we can somehow “repair” them, and put them back to work making rich people richer, like the rest of us do. Because most of them are permanently broken. They were barely “workable” to begin with, which is why they were driven out of our culture and into poverty in the first place. A few might be recoverable, but most are not. And that’s a fact we need to face.
So the question really is are we still willing to help them survive even though they are never going to be ‘productive citizens’? Or are we going to continue letting them suffer and die in the streets. And in shacks in backwater towns all across the country? Because only about 1 in 50 of them are ever going to become functional members of society, again. And their numbers are growing far faster then that percentage will ever mitigate.
PureX
Veteran Member
Every big city in the country would bear witness to the inaccuracy of this assumption.
Venice Beach Ca. counted their homeless last year and somehow managed to miss nearly 700 of them living in tents just a few blocks off the 'strip'. The political pressure to make them invisible is enormous, and comes from both the business and political communities. According to the people being paid to do the counting, there were no homeless people in Venice Beach, Ca.,. And yet a video taken a the time clearly shows hundreds of them camped on the sidewalks and in the nearby parks.
This graph also does not appear to include the many, many millions of Americans that are now chronically unemployed, unemployable (for the same reasons that the homeless in the cities are unemployed), and living in broken down, abandoned, and make-shift dwellings all across America. The numbers are staggering, or they would be, if anyone had ever bothered to count them all. And they have increased exponentially since the covid epidemic for a whole range of reasons.
The problem is not homelessness, per se. It's being socially and economically outcast due to illness, addiction, and hopelessness. There's a reason the politicians don't count the people that are not looking for work in their unemployment stats. They don't want us to see just how many people that really is. Because they have no intention of having to face why they exist, or of doing anything about it.
There are so many of them, now, that employers can't find workers for their low-paying jobs anymore. And it's causing real difficulties and shortages. But still, none of the "movers and shakers" in our culture wants to face up to why it's happening.
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Even in great economic times there are those who are very poor, both housed and unhoused, and I think we certainly agree on many of the causes for that persistent condition. I think we would also agree that the numbers of the very poor, housed and unhoused, fluctuates with respect to the overall economy.
One major obstacle that I see in finding solutions centers around individual rights and freedom of autonomy. There are a whole host of things that could be done to resolve poverty and homelessness, however, such solutions would dramatically affect self-autonomy.
For example, you mentioned the chronically underemployed and unemployed "living in broken down, abandoned, and make-shift dwellings all across America." Should someone who lives in a rural area with few jobs, in a run-down trailer without running water or sewer, be made to move to an area with employment opportunities and access to water and sewer, regardless of their strong desire to stay in the region with familial history and personal cultural identity?
If child poverty is directly linked to the poor economic prospects of the parents, should those who do not meet a specific threshold of economic stability be prevented from having children as a means of directly and substantially mitigating this causal factor of childhood poverty?
I do not think the intractability of homelessness solely revolves around the refusal of "movers and shaker" to face up to why it is happening. The issue is finding solutions compatible with an expectation for a high degree of individual autonomy.
PureX
Veteran Member
The thing is, there are no "solutions" by any definition of that term that our society can understand or accept. Those people aren't coming back into the culture that pushed them out in the first place. Mostly because that culture doesn't want them back, and because they are now "broken" people. We have no place for them except as the working poor. And they're already poor. So why work for it? And anyway, the significant majority of them are now unemployable. It would cost a lot of money to 'rehabilitate' them, and the success rate would be very low.
So there is really only one solution left, and that is to stop pushing people into the poverty abyss in the first place. But you can bet your ### that's not going to happen.
I don't think very many people would have to be "made to move" as much as be given the resources and means to do so. If someone was offered a better career and a better standard of living in another area, I'm sure many would take it in a heartbeat - no coercion or force required. Trouble is, no one is actually making any such offers, not really. We live in a time where human beings themselves have become a superfluous and easily replaceable commodity.
A lot of people talk about the "value of human life" in the abstract, but when it comes down to actually paying people what they're worth, it seems the capitalist system has determined that the vast majority of the human race just isn't worth that much. Even people languishing in poverty by U.S. standards have it much better than so many billions across the world who are living in much worse conditions. Many are so desperate that they'd gladly trade in their self-autonomy for a bite to eat or a warm bed to sleep in - if only for just one night.
And along the same lines as self-autonomy, even people who are better off might also have incentive to trade in their self-autonomy - at least to some degree - in order to protect what they have, since they're aware of so many have-nots who might someday try to take what they have by force. To them, homeless people are a mere nuisance, yet people of the same mentality want to build walls on the borders and elevate our national security posture - because the outside world is so dangerous (though not without cause).
Historically, previous eugenics programs have left a rather bitter and awful taste in people's mouths to the point where such ideas tend to be rejected out of hand. Politically, such an idea is a non-starter in this day and age. On the other hand, I've heard some people say "if you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em," which admittedly has a certain Malthusian logic to it.
It's not because the "movers and shakers" aren't facing up to why it is happening. They know full well why it's happening, mainly because they're a bunch of greedy, cheap ******** who care more about their own life of luxury and obscene wealth than they do about human life - or even "individual autonomy," for that matter. There are too malignant elements in high positions in this country, and that's why we have homeless people living on the streets and eating out of garbage cans.
But that's not really the whole issue. The visible existence of homeless people living in absolute destitution serves as an indirect "object lesson" to all of those others out there who aren't homeless but might be in a precarious situation where homelessness is only one or two paychecks away - which accounts for tens of millions of people right now. The homeless exist primarily to scare the crap out of those who only one rung higher, giving a living demonstration of what happens to those who fail to toe the line, show up to work, and follow the rules set by the ruling establishment. That's not individual self-autonomy.
amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
Your whole post seems to give a lot of food for thought, though particularity this bit, perhaps. It hadn't occurred to me that a certain utility might be perceived, in showcasing an outcome, to a degree. It seems to make sense - it applies social pressure. However, I think I'd qualify that outcome slightly, with something I've always intuited, somewhat. And that is, that of the three states : of being homeless, of the social working housed, and of the rich, only the rich and the homeless have the most freedom of speech
That is not to say that being homeless recommends itself on that ground, but that in their position they seem to talk far more freely of their experience, than would a working housed person. Over the last decade, homeless interviews on youtube have become absolutely ubiquitous, and they are all open books. An interview with an employed and housed person however, is rarer than hen's teeth, even though they might have things to say that are just as, if not more, relevant and interesting to the american experience.
The rich obviously can talk freely, no need to analyze that too much. They however, obviously have a preferable position, having purchased their speech, along with comfortable living.
amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
Well no one, on the left or right, talks about a right of people to automatically own a piece of land. You know, this is a broad retort, but go read something about 'uncontacted' tribes, or barely contacted tribes, and notice especially how property rights might differ against what you see in the modern, western situation. Well in our western situation, there definitely seems like there is something unacceptable, about people living in a 'non-productive' / 'non-economically viable' way.
In that sense, there are likely going to be certain kinds workers that it prefers, broadly being those that heavily use petrol products, electricity, cars, and those that are involved in the tech world. Those that are on the periphery of those things, don't really generate the gdp they would like. So for example, I think that they might view the amish, uncontacted rain-forest tribes, and the homeless of california and seatlle all in sort of the same way.
Even if say, each of those groups was able to reach great heights of history and identity, or 'self-reliance,' then that's not exactly what is wanted, unless gdp is generated.
Well, the employed and housed people are out there - and probably many of them post to social media, which is sometimes characterized as some kind of vacuous and vitriolic wasteland of sorts. But one can still see them out there. But nobody really seems to care. Nobody really wants to listen. They might pretend to care, because it's politically expedient. A lot of people talk the talk, but they don't really walk the walk.
I would also suggest that's an underlying reason why "SJWs" and the "woke" crowd are often scorned and ridiculed, since, at the end of the day, these people are just all talk. When it comes to producing tangible results, they seem to come up short every time.
We are talking in generalizations and I certainly agree that there are those that would easily move to follow opportunity, but I still feel that there are those that would be resistant to this. The other aspect is how much incentive is required to entice a relocation and what type of job prospect is required? Would an unemployed steel worker be willing to work manual labor in the agriculture sector? Do you see a solution where the unemployed can set the terms for the type of employment they wish?
I chose an extreme example, but it highlights how not every possible solution would be considered socially acceptable, or be easily accepted by those to whom the solution is applied.
I think you have raised an important point. I would argue that "movers and shakers" may be resistant to attempts to have funding for solutions fall solely on their shoulders. However, I agree that resistance is also strong throughout the economic spectrum, for in a market economy, things like housing, food, and workers themselves are all affected by laws of supply and demand. If everyone is guaranteed a job at a relatively high minimum wage that guarantees a one bedroom apartment for every individual, increased housing demand pushes housing prices up, need to meet high minimum salary pushes costs of products and services up, which, if there is not proportional increase in salaries across the board you have now reduced the buying power of the middle class, and reduced the advantage of higher skill and experience. If salaries increase proportionally, then you will have inflation, as the competition in housing pushes housing prices past the affordability of the new higher minimum wage and we are back to housing insecurity and homelessness.
I'm not an economist, but if you took all the income and assets that you characterize as obscene and redistributed it to all the worlds poor, do you think it would solve the issues we see? Once that wealth is redistributed, what impact will it have on the overall market economy? Will it be wholly unaffected? Are there expected impacts in innovation and quality of products and services when limits are placed on potential earnings for businesses and individuals?
I just don't see the solution being as simple as taxing the rich to cure homelessness.
Productive land is a limited resource. If population was stabilized or reached an equilibrium at level lower than the current global population, then I could see a land guarantee as a possibility. Given the realities of the current population and no indication of of population growth ending or reversing, such an idea would be a non-starter, in my opinion.
As to folks pooling resources to acquire land and create self-sustaining communities, I believe there is limited opportunity for that to occur, and I think I have heard anecdotally that it does occur. I just do not see how it would be expandable beyond the small representative cases we have currently, and in no way to a level able to solve global poverty and homelessness.
Dang, those bums are unsightly.
news.yahoo.com
'They're clearing out the homeless people': San Francisco gets ready for arrival of world leaders
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are to meet next week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. San Francisco will be in the spotlight.